To Leslie film assessment & movie abstract (2022)

Sweeney and Leslie are an ideal display group. He is as nice, uncomplicated and simple as Leslie is mercurial, tortured, and internalized. However paradoxically, Sweeney is extra intriguing throughout his first few appearances onscreen as a result of he is as beneficiant as Leslie is greedy and manipulative. Reasonably than chase her from the property, Sweeney gives her a job as a maid on the motel, and throws in a room for her to reside in. He even pretends to have mistaken Leslie for someone who’d been making use of for the maid job, which supplies Leslie just a little present of dignity earlier than she’s even gotten to know him. 

Normally characters who’re this good in a film the primary time you meet them grow to be hypocrites, exploiters or worse. Sweeney’s a genuinely good one who appears to wish to make everybody’s life higher, even when it means dropping cash and getting personally damage. Sweeney is aware of what he is stepping into — we ultimately get a backstory that explains why he is so variety and nonjudgmental round individuals with Leslie’s issues, even when she’s at her most frazzled and pathetic. And yeah, you guessed it, he is candy on her, and Risenborough and Maron have such quick, easygoing chemistry that you already know there isn’t any means the movie shall be in a position resist the temptation to pair them up for a contented ending, although in actual life a relationship like that is equally more likely to finish with the police or hearth division pulling up on the lodge within the wee hours.

Within the love story side, as in others—akin to Nancy’s cartoonish single-minded willpower to publicly humiliating the heroine each time she will—”To Leslie” makes selections which are a extra typical than one may want for, particularly contemplating how effectively the movie rivets our consideration just by making a psychologically believable grownup lady and letting us watch her exist. The character of Leslie, and Risenborough’s efficiency within the position, are better than the movie that surrounds them. A few of “To Leslie” has a type of heartwarming Nineteen Nineties Sundance-indie really feel, although the unpretentious performing and filming, particularly throughout the razor-wire first act, disguise that; the longer the movie goes on, the extra predictable the story turns into—and all advised, there’s most likely an excessive amount of early degradation and never sufficient scenes displaying Leslie doing the arduous work of righting her personal ship; the stability appears off, and there is most likely an entire different, extra stunning film hiding inside that “Ten Months Later” ellipse close to the top.